In midst of shopping blitz, churches keep faith alive

Monday

Dec 24, 2007 at 12:01 AMDec 24, 2007 at 9:36 AM

With parking lots in area malls more than full and shoppers lining up at the cash counters to get the best deals, area pastors are hoping the faithful won’t be lacking in their efforts to attend church on Christmas Eve.

Chinki Sinha

On Christmas Eve, the Rev. Tenolian R. Bell of St. Paul’s Baptist Church keeps the church doors open for anyone who will come to pray.

It’s always a struggle to fill the pews, he said. And today, he will do his part by making sure he and the church are there for people, he said.

More than 90 percent of adults say they celebrate Christmas, including 84 percent of non-Christians, according to Gallup polls from 1994 to 2005.

With parking lots in area malls more than full and shoppers lining up at counters to get the best deals, area pastors are hoping the faithful won’t be lacking in their efforts to attend church on Christmas Eve.

“Christmas is a big day,” Bell said. “We are expecting 150 people.”

At a Sunday worship service, numbers usually range between 100 and 110, he said. Bell said residents should try to remember the reason for celebrating the holidays in their rush to get dinners, gifts and everything else sorted out.

“They need to re-evaluate their priorities,” he said.

Many area churches try hard to keep the meaning of Christmas through putting up a manger at the church, staging plays or by doing candlelight vigils, telling children the festival isn’t about Santa Claus and jingle bells but about the birth of Jesus Christ.

The Rev. Anthony Barratt at the Church of the Annunciation in Ilion said he is expecting at least 600 to 700 people at the 4 p.m. Christmas Eve prayer service today.

“We have lot more people coming in,” he said.

The increased attendance at area churches is seen because all the people who may not attend church every Sunday show up at the same time, said professor Stark Rodney of the Department of Sociology at Baylor University in Texas.

Easter and Christmas are the two major Christian holidays. While Easter celebrates the resurrection of Christ and remains the most important day many the calendars of many churches, Christmas has assumed a greater importance recently, Barratt said.

The Rev. Arthur Hapanowicz of Holy Trinity Church in Utica will set up a manger scene depicting the birth of Christ to recreate the Christmas magic for his congregation.

“We don’t sing ‘Jingle Bells,’” he said. “This is a day to celebrate, to rejoice.”

As many churches struggle to recruit and retain members, the attendance at Utica’s Tabernacle Baptist Church is growing, the Rev. Mark Caruana said.

Ten years ago, the church was averaging 110 people attending a typical Sunday service. Now it is about 300, and on Christmas Eve, he expects about a 20 percent increase, he said.

The church’s congregation includes about 500 Karen refugees from Myanmar, formerly Burma.

“Many have little else to rely on than their faith,” he said. “Americans … we have so many things we can fill our lives with.”

Commercialization of religious holidays in United States is an old story. But many pastors are hoping things will turn around. A relatively bigger crowd on Christmas Eve attending the services is the reason for that hope, pastors said.

In fact, Barratt said Christmas is indeed commercial, but not in the literal sense. The word commercial means exchange, he said.

“The spirit of it is there,” he said. “Christmas is commercial. It is an exchange between God and human beings. That’s at the heart and everything else flows from there.”

Observer-Dispatch

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